Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Wednesday

Matthew Richardson

The best of Swift?

Graham Swift’s new novel, Wish You Were Here, has been met with mixed reviews. His literary credentials are never in question. But does his latest offering show him at his best? Writing in the latest issue of the Spectator, Anthony Cummins terms this a ‘state of the nation novel’, but one which fails to capture the nation. ‘Wish You Were Here seems more fatalistic than political: a howl not an argument.’ There are structural difficulties too: Swift’s use of multiple narrators dilutes the already thin central character. Also, Swift’s attempt to link agriculture and war is too neat, inspiring some rather strained metaphors about those who die as cattle. But,

Monday

David Blackburn

Making the grade | 20 June 2011

Prior to his suicide, David Foster Wallace gave an interview to Ostap Karmodi for the New York Review of Books. The interview, which has just been published by the NYRB, concentrated on consumerism and its effects on culture. Here is the opening excerpt: Ostap Karmodi: Do you feel we’re living in an age of consumerism or is that just a media concept that doesn’t have any real meaning? David Foster Wallace: This question, as you know, is very complicated. I can give answers that are somewhat simple and I can really talk only about America, because it’s really the only society that I know. America, as everybody knows, is a

Saturday

Clarke Hayes

Bookends: When will there be good news?

I am in love with Jackson Brodie. Does this mean that, in a literary homoerotic twist, I am actually in love with Kate Atkinson, his creator? I think it must. Sometimes I think I am Jackson Brodie. We share many traits: 50-odd, mid-life crisis, a lost (though in my case not murdered) sister. I know that it’s really Kate Atkinson who is Jackson Brodie. She must have a lost or murdered sister, mustn’t she?   I am in love with Jackson Brodie. Does this mean that, in a literary homoerotic twist, I am actually in love with Kate Atkinson, his creator? I think it must. Sometimes I think I am

Francis King

Morality tales

Francis King celebrates Margaret Drabble’s distinguished career and vividly recalls their first meeting I first met a youthful Margaret Drabble when, already myself an established author, I was working at Weidenfeld and Nicolson as a literary adviser. The editorial director was an Australian woman called Barley Allison, sister of an MP, who constantly boasted of having ‘grabbed’ (her word) yet another new author for her distinguished list. Her latest ‘grab’ was a sometimes pensively grave and sometimes energetically argumentative woman, an admired actress when up at Cambridge, with the totally unsuitable surname Drabble. ‘You must meet her,’ Allison told me. ‘Quite remarkable.’ When the three of us sat down to

Bevis Hillier

1951 and all that

The author of this book and I both visited the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank as schoolboys. The author of this book and I both visited the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank as schoolboys. He was 13, I was 11. We were both old enough to remember the war. We were both enduring the post-war austerity. Much was still rationed. Everywhere there were bombsites. From his generally commendable account, I know we both had a similar reaction to the Dome of Discovery, the Skylon and all the other attractions: there was a sense of renewal, lightness, colour, modernity and excess, in contrast to the

Carey Schofield

Clashing by night

Cables from Kabul is Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’s valedictory account of his years as ambassador to Kabul (2007-9) and as this country’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2009-10). Cables from Kabul is Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’s valedictory account of his years as ambassador to Kabul (2007-9) and as this country’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2009-10). A long telegram reporting on the ramp ceremony for a fallen soldier, Corporal Damian Stephen Lawrence of the 2nd Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment, opens the book. It is a beautiful piece, describing the service — ‘in the best traditions of lapidary Anglicanism. Plenty of dignity but not too much religion’ — and the military

Mark Mason

A heart made to be broken

Very useful in modern conversation, Oscar Wilde. Not for the quotable quips — everyone knows those already. His real value comes when you’re trying to guess someone’s sexuality. ‘He can’t be gay,’ someone will say of whoever is under the microscope, ‘he’s married with two kids.’ You hit them with the reply: ‘So was Oscar Wilde.’ It’s hardly surprising that so many people are unaware of Mrs W’s existence, or that those who do tend to forget about her, given her husband’s status as poster boy for the Two Fingers to Convention party. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Oscar was a Victorian Alan Carr, standing in the middle of

Anthony Cummins

Those who die like cattle

An ex-farmer whose brother has died fighting in Iraq is the man at the centre of Graham Swift’s new book, a state-of-the-nation novel on a small canvas. An ex-farmer whose brother has died fighting in Iraq is the man at the centre of Graham Swift’s new book, a state-of-the-nation novel on a small canvas. Jack runs a caravan park on the Isle of Wight, having sold his centuries-old Devon farm to a banker in need of a bolt-hole. His parents are dead, and more than a decade has passed since he’s last been in touch with Tom, nine years his junior. Now Tom’s gone too, blown up by an IED,

Andro Linklater

Patience v. panache

The square jaw and steely gaze are deceptive. In reality, next to a prima donna on the slide, no one is more vain and temperamental than a general on the climb. So much at least is clear from Peter Caddick-Adams’s intriguing study of generals Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. Each was assiduous in the celebrity skills of image-making and audience massage, and none more adept at stabbing rivals in the ribs and ascribing good luck to talent. Yet for all the froth, both succeeded in a trade whose yardstick of success, crushing an opponent to death or submission, cannot be faked. In popular terms, it is the great confrontation in

Friday

Clarke Hayes

Bookends: When will there be good news? | 17 June 2011

Clarke Hayes has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the magazine. Here it is for readers of this blog: I am in love with Jackson Brodie. Does this mean that, in a literary homoerotic twist, I am actually in love with Kate Atkinson, his creator? I think it must. Sometimes I think I am Jackson Brodie. We share many traits: 50-odd, mid-life crisis, a lost (though in my case not murdered) sister. I know that it’s really Kate Atkinson who is Jackson Brodie. She must have a lost or murdered sister, mustn’t she?   I came upon the Brodie novels (Black Swan, £7.99 each) quite by chance,

Peter Robins

Link-blog: lost in translation

Tim Parks keeps digging, interestingly and valuably, on the idea that writing in other languages is becoming tilted towards ease of translation into English. John Self considers the charms and shortcomings of Ali Smith. I have missed not only Bloomsday but also Harriet Beecher Stowe day. In Osaka, there is a house made out of bookshelves. Supermarkets may not be proper bookshops but, to be fair, many of their cashiers probably hate customers too. Drink yourself to death in the style of your favourite writer. In praise of plotlessness. Wired — Wired! — on the disadvantages, so far, of e-reading. Larkin on MacNeice.

Thursday

David Blackburn

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead…

It’s Bloomsday. If Joyce is your bag, then here is a link to the Bloomsday page on the official James Joyce website. Joyce is an acquired taste and can be bitter when you’ve got it. Ulysees is too great a slog to contemplate for some. But an old drunk in Soho once told me that the way to crack Ulysees is to get someone to read it for you. Oddly, I think there’s truth in his involuntary offering of wisdom, though perhaps not in the way he intended, as I hope the above clip of Marcella Riordan reading the last lines of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy proves.

Wednesday

Nik Darlington

The mysteries of spin

Close the nominations. Unless someone publishes proof of Shergar pulling a plough in the Yemen, it must be a good bet for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011. Twirlymen is the absorbing maiden work by Amol Rajan, a journalist at the Independent.  His aim is to celebrate spin bowling’s impressive survival in the face of change and the often unjust machinations of cricketing authorities; to remind us of spin bowling’s past dominance; to explode myths; to raise off-spin, ‘an ugly ducking in cricket’, to its rightful plinth; to extol the mastery of the basics over the capriciousness of mystery; and to celebrate the great Twirlymen. It is a

David Blackburn

Beating the decline of biography

As Dr Johnson famously observed, ‘No man but a blockhead wrote, except for money.’ But even the wisest don’t write for all that much these days. The prevailing view is that the market for serious non-fiction is wilting. Therefore the publicity of prizes counts for double. Yesterday, the shortlist for the BBC’S Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction was announced. The nominees will get some coveted coverage on the Culture Show in the coming weeks. The shortlist includes some familiar names to readers of this blog. John Stubbs has made the cut with his book, Reprobates, which re-casts the term ‘Cavaliers’ and re-imagines their role in the English Civil Wars. Stubbs

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Dear Marty,

Michael Powell, of Powell and Pressburger fame, replies to a script, titled ‘Wiseguys’, sent by Martin Scorcese for the master’s prognosis. The screenplay had been based on Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy (1986). ‘Wiseguys’, of course, became Goodfellas. Hat-tip: Letters of Note.

Daisy Dunn

The Cockney knight

‘Hollywood was different back then.’  For a start, the Awards ceremonies of the ‘60’s weren’t dominated by ‘very small young men who had just been in a vampire film’. Soirees brimmed with the gravitas of Beverley Hills’ most statuesque, those around whom a youthful Michael Caine gawped and assimilated anecdotes until, all of a sudden, he realised he was counted among them.    Diminutive vampires aside, The Elephant to Hollywood, which is Michael Caine’s second autobiography, contains equal reverence for a select crème of today’s acting talent, and the giants of the Hollywood heyday. Jude Law received mixed reviews for Alfie, but Caine can’t rate him highly enough. Even the

Monday

Matthew Richardson

A hatful of facts about…Clive James

1.) Clive James has returned to TV criticism. He was poached out of retirement by the Telegraph who proudly billed their latest catch as the ‘world’s greatest TV critic’. It sees him resume where his groundbreaking Observer column, written between 1972-82, left off. Widely cited as turning TV criticism into serious art, James collected his weekly musings into three volumes of TV criticism: Visions Before Midnight, The Crystal Bucket and Glued to the Box. A compendium volume, On Television, was published in 1990. All are available here.   2.) James is a man of many genres. He has published verse (most recently Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008), four novels, five

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 13 June 2011

The literary world is paying homage to Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96. Here is an excerpt from the Times’ obituary (£).  ‘The curtailment of his formal education was compensated by his intellectual curiosity and by the civilising influence of his mother who introduced him to the pleasures of art and literature. His gifts did not necessarily fit him for regimental duties or reconcile him to the restrictions of peacetime soldiering. His inclinations were rather those of an 18th-century patrician eager to scan the broader horizons offered by the Grand Tour. And so, shortly before his 19th birthday instead of joining the Army, he sailed to Rotterdam and

Sunday

Jerry Hayes

Archer’s gift

One of the most irritating things about the launch of a Jeffrey Archer book is the high pitched whine of indignation and scorn from that small, bitchy and endangered species, the literary community. Well, after God knows how many years and the sale of 350 million books, they have been remarkably reserved about his latest, Only Time Will Tell. In fact, the old rascal has had some favourable reviews from some unexpected sources, The Guardian and The Independent. And well deserved too. No doubt they will be punished by having to read every Booker prize winner’s offerings for the last 20 years. How cruel is that? This is a cracker

Saturday

Mark Mason

Bookends: Lowe and behold

It is 1979. You are a 15-year-old boy starring in a hit US television show. You’ve seen the crowds of screaming girls outside the gates as you arrive for work, and are therefore very excited to have received your first fan letter. You open it eagerly and begin to read: ‘Dear Mr Rob Lowe, You are a great actor. Can you please send me an autographed photo of yourself? If possible in a bathing suit or in your underwear. Sincerely, Michael LeBron. #4142214 Pelican Bay Prison.’ It is 1979. You are a 15-year-old boy starring in a hit US television show. You’ve seen the crowds of screaming girls outside the